MHEG-5 – The Future and the Benefits

MHEG-5 has an extremely bright future and is constantly being developed within its overall public standards framework. Already in place are clear paths leading to HD extensions as well as those for PVR and VOD.

IP return channel functionality has been successfully demonstrated by QVC in the UK and specification work is now in progress with prototype implementations leading to low-cost return channel capability for MHEG-5 using IP communications.

It is also possible to include support for VOD control – one of the original purposes of MHEG – in return channel capable profiles, or PushVOD for broadcast only profiles. From November 2006 to March 2007, the BBC conducted a closed public trial involving 200 households exploring “push VOD technology” – the objective being “to test the technologies around off-air capture and navigation in order to deliver broadcaster selected content onto a PVR, record, store and replay rich interactive applications and create a video rich navigation.”

MHEG-5 – The Benefits

MHEG-5 is both cost-effective and technologically efficient. It is highly focussed on the task at hand – that is, being a system for TV interactivity. It carries no baggage and it occupies a small amount of “space” in the receiver to handle those applications that are specifically designed to enhance the TV experience. It benefits from a lightweight user interface and it is powerful enough to provide sophisticated interactive services.

Including an MHEG-5 1.06 engine is an incidental cost for receiver manufacturers due to the modest memory and CPU requirements. This is a minimal cost increase in comparison to rolling out “zapper” boxes while enabling the widespread rollout and adoption of a broad range of interactive services.

MHEG applications are also very bandwidth efficient. The complete BBCi service - which is a very popular feature-rich interactive application on Freeview UK - is transmitted using an average bit rate of 700kbit/s, where the majority of bandwidth usage depends on the size and compression potential of the graphical elements. Also, the entire Freeview NZ seven-day EPG is transmitted within 256Kbit/s.

Using a standards-based approach allows multiple vendors to supply into markets, both at the headend and receiver level. This provides significant competition and that drives down cost while improving performance. It also increases the availability of broadcast, authoring and application tools. MHEG-5 of course allows set-tops to be sold on a per-operator or per-country basis while it also slots into the iDTV sales model by allowing regional integration and sales. Several leading iDTV manufacturers include MHEG-5 receivers in all TVs that they sell in Europe.